


Wick

by atamascolily



Category: The View from Saturday - E. L. Konigsburg
Genre: Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Literary References & Allusions, POV First Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27529633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: The Sillington House gets a not-so-secret garden, and Ethan finds himself coming to life, too.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Wick

**Author's Note:**

  * For [firstlovelatespring](https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstlovelatespring/gifts).



It was a cold gray Saturday afternoon in late November, the kind of drizzly, dispiriting day that required a cup of tea and friends to fully appreciate, both of which I had with me in the dining room of the Sillington House. The Souls were in the middle of our usual weekly gathering when Noah brought up a subject that had been lingering in the back of all our minds for months. 

"Fact: Mrs. Olinski is standing on her own two feet--metaphorically speaking, as her actual physical condition remains unchanged." 

He was right. Since we had won the Academic Bowl last May, Mrs. Olinski had come into her own again, verve and confidence emanating with every movement. Over the summer, she had been a regular fixture at the Sillington House, but since the school year started up again, our interactions were limited mainly to waves, smiles, and abbrievated chats in the hallway between classes. 

"Further fact," Noah went on, "the four of us cannot be a team for the Academic Bowl this year because we are in different homerooms." 

This was unfortunate, as there was a large contingent in Epiphany eager for us to repeat our record-winning sweep of the previous year, but I didn't mind resting on my laurels. For the first time in my life, I had accomplished something even the genius Lucas Potter had never managed and I was enjoying the novelty of my teachers' respect and undivided attention when I raised my hand in class. I fully intended to coast on this achievement for as long as humanly possible, or until I graduated, whichever came first. 

The new homerooms also meant that neither Julian nor I were stuck in the same classroom with Hamilton Knapp and Michael Froelich anymore, at least during official school hours. (Nadia and Noah were not so lucky.) The bus ride to and from school was another matter, but neither of them had dared to cause any more trouble since becoming we had become local celebrities. I wasn't sure how long the reprieve would continue, but I intended to thoroughly enjoy it while it lasted. 

As Nadia was quick to point out, winning the Academic Bowl the first time had been unanticipated, and therefore interesting. Now people would have _expectations_ about us, which we had no intention of gratifying. 

"Therefore," Noah concluded, echoing my own train of thought, "we need a new project. QED. QEF, if you like." 

_Quod erat demonstratum_ was what you were supposed to say at the conclusion of a formal geometric proof: _thus it was to be proven_. It was one of the many seemingly abstract pieces of knowledge we had studied in preparation for the Academic Bowl. _Quod erat faciendum_ was a similiar acronym, except that it implied that you had constructed something first. 

(Julian used both of these phrases in his mathematics classes prior to moving to Epiphany and was surprised to find the rest of us unfamiliar with the terms. Yet another way in which the British educational system sharply diverges from the American.) 

We all looked at Julian now. "QEF, I think," he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a paperback book; I knew what it was before it hit the table: _The Secret Garden_ , by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 

_The Secret Garden_ was my favorite book when I was growing up, and may still be. It is the story of a lonely orphan named Mary Lennox, sent to live with her grieving uncle in his castle on the British moors, only to find a hidden garden that heals her entire family, including the hypochondriac cousin she never knew she had. A musical version premiered on Broadway in 1991 and ran for 709 performances before it closed. I had not been able to see it myself, but I owned the CDs and knew all the lyrics by heart. 

"Father dreams of a garden here at the Sillington House and has asked for our help," Julian said by way of explanation. 

"A _secret_ garden?" Noah raised an eyebrow. "There is no space for a secret garden here on this property. And what is the point of building a garden if no one ever visits it? Especially at a B&B inn." 

"Sometimes the most important things are hidden in plain sight," Nadia said. 

Julian nodded. "Gardens, like magic, requires containment, which necessitates clearly defined boundaries" he said. "But it need not be a high wall meant to keep people out. And even a not-so-secret garden contains the unknown within it." 

"There will have to be some sort of fence," I said. We hadn't had them at our farm until the year after The Farm was built, when all the lush suburban lawns drew in all the deer from miles around. It drove Mother absolutely mad and gave her yet another reason to curse the place under her breath when she thought I wasn't listening. 

"A garden can't rely purely on magic for pest control," Noah agreed. "Even Dickon would have trouble corralling the rapidly expanding deer population in upstate New York." 

Dickon Sowerby is the charming Yorkshire lad who befriends Mary and teaches her about the wisdom of nature. Mary believes everything in the garden is cold and dead until Dickon teaches her to look beneath the surface, scratching the bark with his knife to reveal the living green layer beneath. "Wick," he calls it.

"Science is its own kind of magic," Nadia said. "The most important question is, what kind of garden does Mr. Singh want us to build?" 

"When we lived on the cruise ship, there were fresh flowers on the tables every night whenever possible. And we attended the Chelsea Flower Show on several occasions when we were in port, so he would be thoroughly disappointed if they were not included" Julian reported. "Beyond that, he is open to our suggestions." 

"Well, then," Noah said, draining his teacup and setting it down on his saucer. "What are we waiting for? Let's get to it." 

We spent the rest of the winter brainstorming ideas for the garden, eventually deciding on a broad fenced rectangle with herbs and a kitchen garden closest to the Sillington House, bordered by annuals for cutting and a classic perennial border. From there, the straight lines segued into a winding path lined with evergreen hedges, with a miniature Chartres-style labyrinth with a bench at its center for rest and contemplation. Unlike the tangled maze of legend, or the bean-shaped Minoan version, this was the medieval interpretation, a symmetrical four-petaled flower inscribed within a circle, like a halo. 

"This will be the secret part of the garden," Julian said, pointing at the bench that Nadia had sketched in black ink on the scale map representing our plans. "Hidden in plain sight." 

Once we had the general ideas down on paper, we poured over seed and perennial catalogues that my mother purchased from each year, along with those from other companies too fanciful or impractical for our family's farm. I drew up a sowing and planting schedule, Noah wrote out lists of supplies and expenditures in his precise, orderly calligraphy, and Mr. Singh made the orders.

Soon enough, it was early spring and time to sow seeds and break ground. As I was the most experienced of The Souls in all things animal, vegetable, and mineral, I was the one directing the others into making our vision a reality. 

"A garden must be planned out. It is like a performance," Julian said, with a nod in my direction. He seemed to know where my true interests lay without us ever speaking of them directly--perhaps because he was a performer himself, in his own way. 

I had not realized the connection between my time on the farm and my theatrical ambitions before, and I was oddly touched. In addition to our project at the Sillington House, I was still working with my mother on the farm, and his observation made my aches and pains that much more bearable.

For the first time in my life, I was no longer counting down the years until I could make my escape. 

***

Mother never bothered laying out the farm beds with string, or edging the borders with a spade--we had a tractor for that--but Noah and Julian wanted to, so we did. I didn't mind. Two people holding the string taut while the other two sowed or transplanted was just the right division of labor. 

Predictably, the labyrinth was harder. After laying out the curves and swirls of the design--we dug trenches along each side of the path and filled them with hardy boxwood purchased from a local wholesale nursery. Noah wielded the electric hedge trimmers with surprising poise, although Nadia and Julian were the only ones with the patience for pruning the topiary specimens. 

It was hard, hot, sweaty work, but it was satisfying to watch the plants settle in. The rigid straight lines of the kitchen garden expanded into tidy rows of lettuce, onions, and carrots, and the zinnias, sunflowers and celosia in the cutting garden burst into bloom. Walking through the place by mid-summer, it was hard to believe the whole thing had come together in such short time. Even the labyrinth and the topiary looked as though they had always been there. 

That year, there were bouquets in the dining room of the Sillington House every day, as well as a hearty crop of cherry tomatoes and home-grown salads. Mr. Singh beamed every time the four of us came in with armfuls of kale or dragging buckets of freshly cut flowers into the kitchen for him to process. We all took turns arranging the flowers, but I found I particularly had a knack for it that I knew would somehow come in handy if I could figure out how to apply it to the theater. 

If Mother had been afraid that the new garden would impact our own sales, she needn't have worried; the Singhs were still a fixture at the Saturday market, coming in early with a rolling cart to purchase large quantities of produce from local vendors. Julian and I would nod to each other, and Mr. Singh would pause to admire the quality of our eggs, but otherwise we did not acknowledge our connections to each other. 

As Julian had predicted, few guests made it all the way down the path to the entrance to our labyrinth, let alone all the way to the center.

"Hidden in plain sight," he repeated, when I commented on it. "The ones who need it will find it." 

***

Despite its twists and turns, a Chartres-style labyrinth has a single continuous path to the center. It is named for the famous cathedral at Chartres in France, where the most famous labyrinth with this design was built a thousand years after the birth of Christ. Although some considered it a pagan holdover, medieval pilgrims walked the labyrinth as a form of meditation, trusting that every meander would lead them to a mystical union with God. 

I found myself drawn to the labyrinth at the Sillington House, walking it over and over again through the changing seasons as a part of my weekly visits--sometimes with one or two of The Souls, usually by myself. Unlike those medieval pilgrims, my motives were not religious. It was as if I was searching for the answer to a question I already knew, if only I could make the space to hear it. 

Two years after that drizzly November day where we had first dreamed the garden into existence, I was sitting on the bench at the center of the labyrinth, watching the pale white plume of my breath ripple through the chill winter air. Then I felt that inscrutable tingle down my spine that comes when someone is watching you, and turned to find Julian standing before me, waiting for me to acknowledge him. 

It was three-thirty on a Saturday afternoon. Mr. Singh would be laying out tea in the dining room and Noah and Nadia would join us soon enough. But in that moment, there was no one in the world but the two of us as I gestured for him to approach. 

"How are you?" Julian said, as he settled beside me on the bench. Ninth grade wasn't as good as sixth or seventh grade or even eighth grade, but it was a lot better because I had The Souls, even if only a handful of people at Clarion County High had any idea how deeply interconnected we were. 

"Wick," I said, knowing he would understand what I meant without having to explain. 

And he did.


End file.
